Today’s Theme Music

Songs are bouncing through my head. Why today and now?

I don’t know.

They’re happening against the writing, dreaming, holiday, marriage, and life background. Each of those arenas inject their own spectrum of influences. All feel equally strong this week but writing is affecting the others. I’m deeply involved in the novel writing process, so much so that I’m losing track of the calendar and holiday, and I’m withdrawn into my thinking and writing. This, unsurprisingly, triggers my spouse’s deep irritation and some resentment.

I see her point. Yet, that is me, an emotional cripple, and a writer. I write to explore what I think but also what I feel. It leaves me at the crossroads at midnight, waiting to consummate a deal with the devil. I can’t abandon thinking about the novel and its elements of chi-p, Pram, Brett, virii, time-travel and the like. It’s too late for that; the novel’s presence is embedded in my psyche and will likely remain there until the story is fully told.

Yet I look for the leap from my life cycles to the song cycles. I wonder how songs are connected to smells and smells are connected to sights and sights are connected to emotions and emotions are connected to intelligence and intelligence is connected with memory and memory is connected to songs. It’s all wired together but something charges the wires, making some wires come alive, opening and closing switches, and taking me to unexpected places.

Like these songs.

Against the backdrop of writing and living, I’d been thinking about Mike Posner’s song and his lyrics.

I took a pill in Ibiza
To show Avicii I was cool
And when I finally got sober, felt 10 years older
But fuck it, it was something to do
I’m living out in LA
I drive a sports car just to prove
I’m a real big baller ’cause I made a million dollars
And I spend it on girls and shoes

But you don’t wanna be high like me
Never really knowing why like me
You don’t ever wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone
You don’t wanna ride the bus like this
Never knowing who to trust like this

I was particularly hooked on the lines, ‘But you don’t wanna be high like me, Never knowing why like me’. From there, drifting through the lyrics last night, I awoke today singing:

Tell you ’bout a dream that I have every night
Tell you ’bout a dream that I have every night
It ain’t kodachrome and it isn’t black and white
Take me for a fool if you feel that’s right
Well I’m never on my own but there’s nobody in sight

I don’t know if I’m scared of the lightning
Trying to reach me
I can’t turn to the left or the right
I’m too scared to run and I’m too weak to fight
But I don’t care it’s all psychobabble rap to me

Tell you ’bout a dream that I have every night
It’s in dolby stereo but I never hear it right
Take me for a fool well that’s alright
Well I see the way to go but there isn’t any light

That song is ‘Psychobabble’ by the Alan Parsons Project. The album containing the song was released in 1982. I listened to it on cassette tape while I lived and worked on Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

I can see how the two songs, Mike Posner’s ‘I Took A Pill in Ibiza’ and Alan Parsons Project’s ‘Psychobabble’ fused in my mind. There’s a thread of questioning identity in both and reflections about our minds and choices. It’s more a question of why those songs nestled into the thinking and feeling about everything else this week.

And as I wrote it, I saw it. These songs arose from the morass because I’m conflicted; because guilt assails me. Because responsibilities and desires are torn and my frustrations are running high.

I thought one of these songs should be today’s theme music for my day. I finally decided to go with ‘Psychobabble’ because it’s more recent. See, it’s the latest one that I’ve been singing.

In my mind.

December 22, 2016 0

Today’s Theme Music

This is another one from my military annals.

I was stationed with the 7405th Ops Squadron at Rhein-Mein AB in Germany in the late 1980s. This song, ‘Roxanne’ by the Police came out in 1978. The movie was featured in ‘Beverly Hills Cops’ with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 1984. Yet, here we were seeking it at a fundraiser five years later.

We had an charity unit, the Tipplers. Joining the Tipplers cost five dollars. The Tipplers subsidized purchases that were then sold to members at cost. This things included our squadron coins and memorabilia, and the squadron wine. But this organization was mainly about charity. We supported an orphanage in Spain and another one in Germany. We also supported the annual Marine toy drive for Christmas and a few other charities throughout the year.

I was the Tipplers secretary for a few years, an elected position, at was so at this particular event. Several organizations on base had donated money, time and material to build a booth that could be used for these things. Setting up the booth on a cold sunny morning in the Main Exchange parking lot, we were grilling hamburgers and cheeseburgers and selling them to people entering and leaving the exchange.

I have a habit of singing to myself. On that morning, as I manned the service counter and awaited customers, I began singing ‘Roxanne’.

Except I was doing it like Eddie Murphy’s character in BHC, slightly loud and off key.

And my unit decided to sing along with me.

I laugh even looking back at it. Bunch of people in jeans, jackets and hats, trying to keep warm, grilling burgers and selling them, singing ‘Roxanne’.

Ah, good times.

December 21, 2016 0

Today’s Theme Music

Back into the wayback machine for this choice – which puts in mind the fantasy, wouldn’t it be cool to have a wayback machine? “Yes, but the paradoxes, what you would do to time,” naysayers moan. Yeah, let’s suspend logic; suspend physics, quantum mechanics, all the thinking and all the relative theories. Just pretend you’re a child and play with ideas of all the time travel variations possible.

Here’s one.

Just about every house is getting one. It’s the hot holiday gift, and it’s on sale in dozens of places. You, disliking crowds and cold weather, and feeling bored, restless and wanting a change, surf the net and turn to Amazon to check out the offerings and read the reviews. They come up immediately: Wayback Machines. They’re priced at just under six hundred dollars. If you order today, sites claim, “Receive this by Christmas with Free Shipping!”

Okay, but six hundred eggs. Cards are already heavy with spending for the season for toys and clothes, dinners out. But you’re intrigued. You read.

“What’s included: computer interlink, two bracelets, headgear and software.” You skip into the specs and the system requirements, bringing up your system’s information and running a mental checklist.

You have the computer speed, the computer power, an approved OS, the USB ports, everything needed. Well, hell, you should, you blew a wad on this laptop just a year ago for your own special Christmas present because, WTF, you deserve it.

“This is not virtual reality,” a review says. “This the real thing. You are there.”

Yeah, you’ve read the ads, seen them on television during football and baseball games for half the year, talked about them at work while waiting for meetings to begin, swapped information with friends over wine and beer. You know what it’s supposed to be, what it can do.

So you order your Wayback Machine.

Three days later, it arrives. Boxes are in boxes. You’re usually so organized about opening and unpacking boxes, especially things like this, but you’ve become really excited about what it can do.

“Where the fuck is the quick start?” you ask, and it’s right there, the very first thing you pulled out after opening a box, a DVD. There are cables and the headgear, which looks like one of those half-helmets, the small console, the size of your first Roku, resembling a blue and black cigarette back, and the silver and black bracelets.

It’s a clean set-up and install. Breathlessly you power everything up, starting as the program booms, “Welcome,” even thought it’s a soft female voice. Lights are green. The program shows up on your laptop’s screen. You’re sweating and trembling. Well, the heat is running. It’s snowing outside. The wife, children and grandchildren are all out shopping. Then they’re eating somewhere and going ice-skating. You tell your phone to turn down the heat.

Snow falls more heavily outside past the windows. Inside, it’s just you. Your anticipation amazes you. You hope you won’t be disappointed. You put on the bracelets and headgear. The system checks you out. The Wayback program asks, “Do you want to sync with your Fitbit and smart phone?” Hell, yes.

Thirty seconds later, that is done. “Select a year from your life,” the program says.Feeding off a memory, a hope, a dream, you select 1964.

Then shoves now aside. It feels a little violent, more violent than the reviews said it would be like. Your pulse breaks out into something appropriate for finishing a hundred yard dash. Your body –

Oh, my god, you’re back in it, you’re ten years old ago. You’re so skinny. Jesus. It’s amazing how much you look like your grandson, Yuri.

Your young entity is reading a book. The pages swim into your understanding: ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’.

You tear your attention from the page. You’re back in your parents house, Jesus, a place they sold during their divorce in the mid-1970s, back in the wood-paneled game room, built from the finished basement downstairs. In the corner is your father’s bar, positioned back there where he can see the television or play pool. You’re on that leather sofa he and your mother bought for the room. You remember, “This is where the dog barfed,” a disgusting moment that will happen in another year. You won’t even have the dog for a few more months.

There’s the big console TV. Brand new, the huge Zenith can broadcast in color. Taking over your young self – he doesn’t seem to notice – you pick up the remote control, amused at the differences between the technology of your youth, when color TV was new, and the technology of your life, using a computer to come back here. How the fuck is that even possible? You want to explore but you begin carefully, by turning on the television.

There is a show on in black and white. OMG, it’s the Kinks. Jesus, are they still even alive?

Then, releasing everything but enjoyment of the moment, you’re ten and watching the Kinks in your basement in black and white. Everything old is young and new, and you are free to believe that you can change the world.

December 19, 2016 6

Today’s Theme Music

An usual choice for me today, this song isn’t my favorite from this band, and I don’t consider it their best. It was very different from their preceding work, and I thought of it as a sell-out at its debut. The lyrics draw me more than anything. It’s a bit sad, though, but the refrain, “But I don’t ever want to feel the way I felt that day,” is an empowering theme to sing to yourself when you’ve made a decision, if you’re a romantic.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Under the Bridge’, 1992.

December 14, 2016 2

Today’s Theme Music

In light of the beer news of acquisitions, sell-offs and mergers, I thought I’d go with a brew theme. What could be better than Cream’s ‘Strange Brew’. Most Americans and many other world citizens have watched Donald Trump win the presidential election to become the President-Elect. His support and campaign were also pretty strange brews, as was the whole election cycle.

So what the hell? Let’s finish this year and see how far the strange brew carries us. BTW, be sure to check out Eric Clapton’s clothes and hairs. Woo. Stylin’. Sadly, perhaps tragically, or comically, I remembered being adorned in somewhat similar styles in my teens.

Life sure is a strange brew, and fashion can be the strangest brew of all.

December 13, 2016 6

Today’s Theme Music

Randy claimed he wasn’t racist. We believed him. “Some of my best friends are black,” he said. That was true. We knew them. But coming from Alabama, he said a lot of racist – and sexist – things. He was a genuine throwback, but he was genuine. Still, that didn’t keep us from getting indignant about his attitude, pissed off at him, and worried about getting our asses kicked.

That’s exactly what Rich said that night at the St. James Infirmary in Mountain View, California, around 1994. “They’re going to kick our asses.”

‘They’ were the black people who dominated the club and were having a great time dancing. Randy called the music being played ‘Black music’. He saw nothing wrong with that as we argued with him. “Play some white music,” he yelled whenever a song ended. That prompted a lot of heads swiveling our way and deep stares.

Eventually, the DJ said, “Would the gentleman who wants some white music please come talk to me.” Randy did. Randy got along with everyone. After he returned, he said, “They’re going to play some white music.”

The white music that was played was one of our favorite drinking songs. We were in the military and we did a lot of drinking. We liked to gather in a circle and sing this song.

Randy passed away from cancer in 2016, sixty years old. He never changed, to my knowledge. But his Facebook page mourning his passing has a number of entries by black people from his church lamenting his passing. He was a character.

Here’s Meatloaf with ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Lights’, 1977.

December 11, 2016 4

Blackbird

I’m often frustrated with myself, questioning my mind, cringing at things I’ve done in the past, and challenging my motives and stances, and trying to learn and grow. It’s complicated and wearying.

Part of this is about being a guy. As a guy, I enjoy speed, power, football. I’m a beer drinker, but was a Jack and Coke guy for decades, and a cigar smoker. I was known for being hard-ass about getting the mission accomplished.

The other is about being a human. As a human, I want peace, freedom and equality for everyone. As a human, pro football is barbaric; speed and power – Formula One, NASCAR, fighter jets and rockets – are unnecessary indulgences. As a guy, those things are awesome, and pro football, as practiced by the NFL, is cerebral but violent, graceful, fast…and violent.

Within those boundaries, I grew up in love with speed and technology. They’re most ultimately married in aerospace technology in my thinking, part of science fiction’s magnetic appeal. And within that domain, there is little like the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

I was stationed at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, for four years in the early 1980s. Kadena AB has long runways and is strategically located on the Pacific’s edge. Blackbirds, dubbed Habus by the locals, flew in and out all the time. Being down on the flight line and watching one take off just after sunset, when the sky is a diluted Royal blue and watching those big engines release orange and blue tongues, was beauty in motion. Wheels up, they turned up, and quickly disappeared. I watched until I could no longer see it.

New Atlas has a terrific interview with a Habu pilot. Brian Shul was shot down and left for dead in Cambodia before being rescued. Eventually becoming an SR-71 pilot, Loz Blaine had a nice piece on him, well worth reading for the human side of people using this technology.

The two links embedded in the article are also worthwhile. Both are funny. One is about an air speed pissing contest posted at Opposite Lock. The other is about doing a favor for an ex-SR-71 pilot via a slow flyby and giving some young boys something to talk about, published on Foxtrot Alpha.

I hope you check them out and enjoy them as much as me.

December 8, 2016 4

Things I Don’t Miss

Didn’t need to scrap ice off my car this morning because it’s garaged. I felt for the neighbor out there de-icing his vehicle. There, I thought, is something I don’t miss, which launched me into musings about what else I don’t miss.

I don’t miss lite beers in any shape or vintage. Thank the gods for micro-brews and craft beers!

I don’t miss saving and counting pennies to buy a bag of pretzels as a treat or to go the movies. My years of extremely tight budgeting taught me the value of budgeting and saving but I enjoy indulging myself now, and I don’t miss those days at all!

I don’t miss military recalls, deployments and twelve hour shifts. I don’t miss midnight shifts, either, or pressing uniforms and getting haircuts all the time. Mission success was satisfying and I met some excellent people and saw the world, but I don’t miss all those other military accouterments.

I don’t miss cable television. Cable was cool and fun for a while but as it developed into a commodity and charged more and more while offering me less and less, it became a huge weight of disappointment. The smart television, Roku and streaming services aren’t perfect but they’re better than cable.

I don’t miss all those company meetings. Six AM, 9 PM…on some days with IBM I was on telephone calls and sorting and answering emails for hours. Don’t miss them at all, nor the annual performance report rituals. I really don’t miss completing expense reports. Just like the military, I enjoyed the company of some great people while I was with IBM (and the companies IBM absorbed, NetworkICE and ISS). Them, I miss. I also get a little misty eyed about the absent paycheck and its company.

I don’t miss old technology. Take my old floppies – please (badaboom – tish). You can take them to where the IBM Selectrics and my Brother portable typewriters are buried, along with my old KayPro 10 and Zenith 150, and my clunky SVG and EVG color monitors, and 4.87 and 10 megahertz operating speeds.

It’s a short list of what I don’t miss. I had a good time through it all and came out fortunate in the end.

What don’t you miss?

December 7, 2016 8

Today’s Theme Music

I was doing things differently on Thursday night. That change in routine delivered me to television channel surfing.

Television channel surfing has changed during my lifetime. We didn’t really have channel surfing in the early days. Our home enjoyed four channels for a number of years. Rotary dials, and later push-buttons, controlled the channel selections and volumes. That met getting up to change the channel or turn the television up or down. Schedules were pretty fixed and everything was well-advertised. Little was controversial because most of it was being buried the way a killer hides a body. Surfing really exploded with development of cable television and the remote control.

Now I have remotes but no cable. My television comes to me via a Roku in the study (a.k.a. ‘The Snug’) and an Internet connected ‘smart’ television in another room. The rest is received over-the-airways.

OTA is growing in popularity. Stations showing old shows are growing with it. I watched the ‘Comet’ television station the other night along with ‘Me TV’. On one of them (I was surfing, remember), I came across ‘Barney Miller’ reruns and watched two episodes. It was cool seeing Hal, Ron, Abe and the others, people who have aged or passed on, and enjoy some of their skills and talents once again, along with the writing, directing and producing talents of all those people behind the scenes. The shows ignited a flood about fashion and bell bottoms, too.

You probably know where this is headed if you’ve read anything of me. The ‘Barney Miller’ theme song has lodged in my head like a deer tick in my calf. I must rid myself of it, and to do that, others must hear it. So, please, I beg you, men and women of the Internet, play this song and relieve me of my suffering.

To be fair, it’s not bad as theme music goes. Reminding me of old jazz, it begins with a slow, low bass line, and then the song builds in tempo as more instruments are layered in, becoming an upbeat tune by the end. Go ahead, take a listen.

December 4, 2016 0

What Christmas Means to Me

Santas in the malls

Music in the stores